Helping entrepreneurs & podcast hosts grow their business using LinkedIn

OPENING - EPISODE 38 PAUL WRIGHT Hello everyone and welcome to the Link Thru Social Podcast. My name is Paul Wright. Well, we are in episode number 38 today, and we have a wonderful guest, Daniel Alfon. He's a LinkedIn author, expert, and trainer. So we will get to him shortly. But first, make your event impossible to ignore with Link Thru Social, your social media partner for live events. From MMA, pro wrestling, sporting events to festivals, concerts, and trade shows. We help build the buzz, engage your audience, and get more eyes on your event before, during, and after the big day. Go to our website, linkthrusocial.com, or reach out to us on our social media platforms at LinkthruSocial. That's T H R U. Well, we'll get to Daniel Alfon and episode number 38, right after this short message. SPONSOR MESSAGE - TICKETPORTX SPONSOR MESSAGE You've worked hard to build your audience. So why send your customers somewhere else? Introducing white-label digital storefronts from TicketportX. Now you can process tickets, registrations, donations, merchandise sales, and collect valuable customer data directly on your website or custom landing page. Increase brand visibility, create a stronger connection with your customers, deliver a seamless user experience, and monetize your brand with high-converting pages powered by TicketportX's, secure hosting, payment processing, and event technology. Perfect for festivals, conventions, classes, retail storefronts, charity events, sporting events, and even free events. Manage entire event series from a single storefront and spend less money marketing multiple links and event pages. One platform, one link, endless possibilities. TicketportX, powering your brand, your events, and your growth. INTERVIEW - DANIEL ALFON / LINKEDIN EXPERT & TRAINER PAUL WRIGHT & DANIEL ALFON And welcome back to the Link Thru Social Podcast. Well, we have a really special guest for us today, Daniel Alfon. And Daniel helps entrepreneurs and podcast hosts grow their business, author of the book Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success. Signed up in February 2004 to LinkedIn. Yes, that's right. You read that right. And Daniel is French-born and Israeli raised. Daniel, we really appreciate you joining us here today. Paul, thank you very much for having me on Link Thru Social. Now, before we get started, maybe you can give us a little bit more about your background and how you arrived here today. With pleasure. I got an invitation, as you said, in 2004 from a person I trusted. And I said, Paul, if that person is on this thing called LinkedIn, I need to check it out. Right. Yeah. Two years later, LinkedIn helped me slash my sales cycle, and that's the moment I decided to see what's under the hood. And since we started this link through social episode, 100 people have joined LinkedIn every second, three people sign up. Amazing. Amazing. That's that's absolutely incredible. so let's let's get started. your your followers. you have a lot of followers, obviously. what do you teach people about LinkedIn? What what is the give us the the the the top three most important things why business people should be using LinkedIn? Excellent. So I'll mention Google, I'll mention referrals, and I'll mention credits. Google, if you run a search for the entrepreneur's name, usually LinkedIn will be one of the very top results. That means that people will check it out, even if you haven't visited your own LinkedIn profile poll for a year, it doesn't matter. It will be a very it will have a strong rank in at Google. If referrals are important for your business, and referrals are an ideal way to enroll new clients because they they have they're a warm lead, they can't resold, they're there's less price sensitive. The question I ask my clients is if you had to pick one poll in three years' time, would you like to be on LinkedIn the most connected or the best connected? It's a very simple question. Most people would have an answer. What would be yours? Yeah, how would you answer? I I would say that LinkedIn is is very important to my business. I do social media management, as you know, and it's it's really opened up a lot of doors for me over the years, and you're right, it does help in your rankings as far as search engines are concerned, specifically Google. And now in in recent times, with the emergence of AI, it's another good way to be found on AI searches as well, I found. because they're looking for relevancy, and I believe LinkedIn can do that, especially if you post regularly. you mentioned that you know you can have an account that you don't really do anything with, and it will be found in search engines. But as far as AI search, I think if you're if you're posting regularly on there, it definitely helps. Excellent. And if you run an advanced search, if you know who your ideal client is, let's take an example. If I'm interested in launching my podcast, Paul, and I have no clue how to start, and I bump into your own LinkedIn profile, then I see that you and I share one mutual connection, or even two. One is Roy Coughlin, the pod father himself. So if I wanted to work with you, what I would do is reach out to Roy and say, I noticed you collected you're connected with Paul Wright from Link Thru Social. Would you think it would be a good idea for me to speak with him? If he says yes, then we've got business, we've got something interesting going because I would be a little more attentive because Roy said you were the go-to person. Yes, that's the reason you need to pick either quantity or quality, and told the secret is that they're mutually exclusive. Most business owners would like both. Yes, yeah. You can't have it both ways, you can't have your your cake in it because if you have a large network, there's no way you could know really personally 15,000 people. Right. And if you want to be most best connected, it means your your network will be small. Most people try to have it both ways and they end up with maybe 3,000, 4,000 followers. They think they have exposure, but I'm afraid exposure on LinkedIn starts when you have today maybe 30 or 40,000 followers. So pick one. Yeah, no, you're right. It's it's it's all about it's all about quality, and I I think that's that's extremely extremely important. Now, the new AI algorithm on LinkedIn, how does it really matter to us? So LinkedIn played with something called 360 brew, and the idea instead of measuring how many people engage with your post, say you you shared something on LinkedIn, make LinkedIn would usually check how many people liked or commented or reshared that. And the AI trial, the AI experiment was let's see and analyze what does Paul do? Is it clear that Paul works with businesses, that he has the age an agency and that he specializes in helping businesses? Yeah, if it is, does that content resonate with that? Does he share content about ways for business to grow? And only if you pass those initial tests, then LinkedIn will show your post to the world. Imagine someone where their profile is not very clear. They started by doing A, now they're doing B, and what they share is C. So the algorithm looks and says, we're we it's too ambiguous, we're not sure. And then throttle or limit the amount of people who will see that. So make sure your profile is streamlined in the eyes of your ideal client, and ideally also in the eyes of AI, that experiment has ended, but I think LinkedIn will keep trying to do something like that. Yes, yeah, no, for sure. Now, if if there's podcast hosts out there that have either just recently started a podcast or they've been doing it a while and they're not getting much traction. what's the best way for podcast hosts to share a new episode on LinkedIn? Excellent. Can I suggest a slightly different question? So the the angle will usually be check out episode number 29 with Mark Newsome, also known as Mr. Marketer. Yes. It's a good episode, but if I were you, I would consider one of those two things. Either pick an interesting question you asked Mark and start your post on LinkedIn by saying, I asked Mark this question, and the beginning of his answer was in you in you stop with a cliffhanger part, you don't provide the whole answer. Yes, to see the answer in other questions or other topics we discussed, please check that episode because episode 29 is from our perspective from the host. If we're looking at it from the reader's perspective, then the content should be more interesting. You could simply ask a fierce, like a frightening question. What would happen if you had no longer access to all your social channels as a business owner? And you discuss this very topic and you discuss the importance of moving clients and leads away from social because anything LinkedIn included is rented space. We enjoy it, but we might be locked out, the platform might be bought or discontinued, things will change. So, yeah, having our own system, when I go to your website, there's a way for you to capture my information to enable you to send me information once I accept it. So it's a lot stronger than social. Yeah, instead of just dumping the episode, I would consider picking cherry pick an interesting quote and share that with a cold start and a cliffhanger, compelling people to want to check the episode for the content. Yeah, yeah. Good point. It's it's it's actually what they do in in Hollywood, right? They they'll when they're promoting a new movie or or TV show, they're gonna they're gonna put the best foot forward. Those clips always have the best parts of the entire movie, but not just enough to tease you to, oh, I want to see this. I I can't wait. And very, very very good point there. Yes, absolutely. It's amazing, it's amazing that you say that because it's it's really a trailer. What you post should be you think as a screenwriter or or someone who produces or edits the trailer? You want people to know things that you discuss, but you don't want to give it all away. So you pick the most interesting topic. It it's it's a great way to look at it. Now, other than LinkedIn, the social platforms that are being used today, what other ones do you find still relevant to promote someone's podcast? is X really dead? I know you're all you're you're active on X, and a lot of people ask me that same question, especially up here in Canada. I I don't think it's as relevant as it is in the in the US anymore. But what what are your feelings on on specifically X? And then maybe mention a few other social platforms that you find to be engaging and and maybe productive as far as promoting. So, Paul, what I would ask is is I would narrow the question, are your clients on X? And you can ask, are my clients still on X? Yes. And it could be that X may be on the downside, but as long as the people you're most interested in are active on X, then it makes sense for you to not neglect that platform. Yes. X is an interesting you can learn a lot on X without posting anything, just like you can learn a lot on LinkedIn without posting anything. And the simple question would be where are my clients? If you have a B2C product, maybe Instagram, if you have a visual like a restaurant, something that like that, and maybe Instagram would be best. If your business is related to something that's real-time, maybe sports, elections, stuff like that, then then X is still very, very important. Yes, yeah, yeah, right. And and any other social platforms that you use regularly? Don't tell anyone, but there's something called Quora, Q U O R A. Oh, okay. A question, question and answer, and I found it to be an amazing place to learn. Okay. very important founders and tech leaders providing long and and detailed answers. I would advise you to start using it with something that is not social and not not about your business, because then you would have like all sorts of questions. Starts with some musician you love, some movie director you love, something you know a lot about, but it's not necessarily related with link for social, and that will help you understand the system. So if if you had to pick one artist in all genres, who would that person be? I as as far as an artist is concerned, I like Ed Sheeran. he's he's a excellent, yeah, he's a great singer. Excellent. So you you would look for this for the topic Ed Sheeran, not the user, but the topic, and you would see all sorts of questions like what is his best album or about his burrito or do it so stuff like that, and you would be able to assess the quality of the answers and also give an upvote to something you found interesting, right? And if you see that Jane Doe is answering excellent questions about Ethereum, then maybe you'll check her out and you'll discover that she also answers good questions about something else. And only after you understand the infrastructure, then I would advise you to use Quora for business. But start with something that is fun, something you do know about, something you want to know more about, and that will help you understand how the system works. Again, don't tell anyone, please. Okay, it will be our our secret. now you were author of the book Build a LinkedIn Profile for Business Success. is that book still available? And what maybe tell us a little bit more about that. It is, it was an interesting experience, but since I added 150 screenshots to the book, I no longer actively promote it. LinkedIn has changed so much since that I think it makes more sense to to either book a call or do something something else. Yes, it was a very, very interesting experience to try. Imagine you try to encapsulate your knowledge and write it and have the right flow, and and you learn a lot about Amazon and keywords and first sentence, I can quote, your profile is not for you. And the continuation is it's for your ideal reader. Who is your ideal reader, etc.? Interesting. It must have been an amazing experience, though. now your website is DanielAlfon.com. if our our viewers and listeners visit there, what what are they gonna find on your website? they'll find ways to download content, to read articles, to download paid and free guides, to join a masterclass and to book a one-on-one call with me and say, I I checked you out on Link through social, and here's my question. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Daniel, we're just about out of time. really appreciate you coming in today and and giving us a lot of insight and and asking myself the questions. And I I love this. I encourage everyone to go to Daniel's website. He has a lot of really interesting tools on there. And of course, you can reach out to him through the site or of course on LinkedIn. he is also active on X. And Daniel, we really appreciate you taking the time today. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to speak with you on Link Thru Social. Okay, well, we're gonna take a short break, and the Link Thru Social podcast will be back right after this. SPONSOR MESSAGE - SMART POST APP SPONSOR MESSAGE Tired of stressing over what to post on social media? Meet Smart Post App, your all-in-one solution to create, schedule, and grow your content effortlessly. In just a few taps, you can generate engaging posts, stay consistent, and keep your audience coming back for more. No more guessing, no more burnout, just smarter content faster. Whether you're a business owner, creator, or entrepreneur, Smart Post App offers both premium and pro plans. In addition, we have new features that have been recently added that include instantly viewing public links to your posts on any network, weekly view allowing you to plan hour by hour, account groups, group your accounts to save time and simplify your workflow, and a desktop version, which offers a simpler way to stay consistent. Start posting smarter today at smartpostapp.com. 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